Learning not to Take Free Online Library Books for Granted

A library book is a great thing. They are free, you get nearly unlimited choice, and every trip to the library feels like an exploration in knowledge. If only library books could be more like new books. Such a thing does exist as a matter of fact, . The perfect library book does exist - one that's always new, that doesn't tear, that can never be dogeared, that you can never lose, and that you never have to to go to the library to get. Free online library books - that you can check out at one of the e-book libraries there are, are just almost perfect. Except for one thing.

The simple and staid library e-book that public libraries have been building into their collections for years now, is caught up in a disagreement that publishers of e-books are beginning to have with libraries. Free online library books are made possible by agreements that libraries have with publishers. A library can basically buy a library book once, and lend it out one reader at a time, as many times as it wants. Publishers like HarperCollins however, want none of this anymore.

The want that once they sell a library an ebook, that they be able to let it out only 26 times (or once every two weeks of the year). After that, they want the library to buy a new book. Librarians across the country, far from accepting all this passively, are coming out in arms against HarperCollins. Everyone wants e-books from their library today; libraries, need to be able to stock e-books to satisfy their membership rolls. They need to be able to do this without bankrupting themselves. Public library budgets, supplied by the state, are pretty stagnant today; we live in a time when teachers are considered redundant in schools. Who is going to have enough money to fund a library? If publishers are allowed to make their policies library-unfriendly, the public is just going to lose out.

HarperCollins does have a point though. Their policy for free online library books was thought of long before anyone even had an e-book reader. Their pricing policy is 10 years old now. They fear that if libraries get to keep eternally new e-books on the catalogs after one purchase, that the emerging e-book ecosystem could be irretrievably damaged. And HarperCollins is one of the good guys; Simon and Schuster Macmillan won't even sell to libraries. At any price. Librarians are beginning to feel that their stand might have been a little hasty. They can see that the publishers who let them have e-books at this time are doing them a favor.